Salesforce, Samsara, Monday and More: “Layoffs are Over. We’re Back to Hiring. Thousands.”

So tougher times aren’t over for everyone that has had them.  But we’re lapping tougher times for many, and for many others, it’s just plain time to hire again.

So many Cloud and SaaS leaders kept hiring flat for the past 12-18 months, and yet still grew.  That works for a while, but you end up with not enough headcount if you do freeze hiring but still want to grow.

The latest examples?  Salesforce, Samsara and Monday:

• Salesforce, after laying off 6,000+ recently … is now hiring 3,300+ plus.  And in fact, it’s prioritizing “boomerang hires” that it laid off … but wished it hadn’t.  There’s some irony here, as Marc Benioff said in ’08-’09 his biggest mistake was pausing hiring in sales.  But Salesforce, and everyone else, had to get more efficient.  With operating margins crossing 30%, they’re ready to hire again.
• Samsara is growing a stunning 40% as it crosses $1B in ARR — and says it needs more and more sales capacity.  Samsara too got a lot more efficient the past 6 quarters, but with record growth, just plain needs more reps. This just makes sense.

• Monday got wildly more efficient the past 12-18 months by holding hiring flat, but now is resuming more aggressive hiring.  But it’s still going to hire more slowly than revenue growth, and that’s the key.  More on this in our deep dive with co-CEO Eran Zinman:

You can’t grow forever with no growth in headcount.  You can’t scale a high-growth SLG-led model without more and more sales reps.

So that’s behind us.  The best in SaaS are reaccelerating hiring.  What’s different this time is leaders, for now at least, are hiring at a slower pace than their revenues are growing. 

They aren’t hiring ahead of revenue growth anymore.  Those days may be behind us for quite a while.

More efficient growth is the theme of the day.